The StarCraft II Website announces that the release date for the Heart of the Swarm expansion for StarCraft 2 is now set as March 12, 2013, this news coming just a week after the news that the RTS add-on is due in the first half of next year. In the meantime, a StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm Presale FAQ has details on the content of a planned Digital Deluxe edition, which will include bonuses for other Blizzard titles. Here's what this will include:

The Digital Deluxe version of includes a digital copy of the expansion along with the following exclusive in-game bonus items for StarCraft II, World of Warcraft®, and Diablo® III:

Players who purchase the Digital Deluxe edition will receive their World of Warcraft and Diablo III in-game bonus items immediately. The StarCraft II bonuses will not be available until Heart of the Swarm is released.

Yeah I was a little surprised too when I heard it. I remembered reading that figure a little while ago so I went to wiki for the comparisons I listed here and their source is the report I remember reading (here)-which itself comes straight from the horse's mouth, a Blizzard earnings report.

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/11/07/diablo-3-surpasses-10-million-sold/That says the 10 million number is from the conference call. I checked the other latest quarterly stuff and that number isn't in there in writing. What IS in there though is the 10 million WoW subscribers number.

Its possible that Kotic got those numbers mixed up. Conference calls have disclaimers on them about the info.

Also, on the previous quarters numbers, they say that 10 million PLAYERS have played the game:linkI'm not sure why they would make that distinction, unless it was that whole free starter thing I think they were doing in some countries. So kotick may have been talking about players rather than sales and gotten the numbers mixed up. Or maybe the reporters took the 10 mill players number and ran with it as sales instead, who knows (I didn't listen to conference call recording).

They have said they've gotten over 6 million in sales earlier this year, so its not beyond the realm of possibility that they are at 10 million sales now. (although in those numbers they are very likely counting 1.2 million from the WoW annual pass, so maybe thats why they say players rather than sales). They also sold 3.5 million in first DAY of release (I believe that counts pre-orders)

Suppa7 wrote on Nov 13, 2012, 23:09:It's the same reason STEAM has 40 million mouthbreathers using it.

Valve has their problems, but they are a FAR cry from actiblizz.

You CAN play steam games offline. You do NOT have to be online first to go offline (you can test this by unplugging network cable before you run steam). They've had some bugs with offline mode in the past, but they've mostly fixed those. There's even a few games on steam that run entirely without having steam running.

If you must have only games without any sorta of protection at all, there's always GoG.

Translation: "Capitalism is the root of all evil. Now get off my lawn!"

Personally, I'm fine with the system. If a bunch of ignorant twats want to mindlessly throw money at greedy corporations, that's their deal. However, I feel developers that create games I enjoy deserve some profit.

Yeah I was a little surprised too when I heard it. I remembered reading that figure a little while ago so I went to wiki for the comparisons I listed here and their source is the report I remember reading (here)-which itself comes straight from the horse's mouth, a Blizzard earnings report.

eRe4s3r wrote on Nov 13, 2012, 13:44:This is what I do nowadays as well, I can't be arsed to play games with good story and some cutscenes but little good gameplay apart that. I watched Halo 4 with a great let's play audio comment .. was very fun ... and the game was extremely short too...

I honestly think Let's plays are going to be illegal soon or at least cracked down upon. Because I can't imagine I am the only one who watches (crap) SP games on youtube, rather than buy and play them, why even PIRATE them when you can just watch the story on youtube, and eat popcorn and drink whatever you drink while at it? You can chill and have a good time for free. The sad thing is, the more a game SP campaign is just Hollywood crap or generally interactive movie the better it works (Black ops 2, Warfighter, BF3 SP ! Halo 4, Heavy Rain etc.) Where the gameplay is literally the same for everyone.

And where it's extremely short to boot.

Thats how I experienced god of war 3, game developers push to make games movies and dumb down gameplay leaves no reason for us to buy their products.

As far as I'm concerned that's fine with me, they can't accuse me of piracy and I get to experience all the cinematic goodness for FREE on youtube since the gameplay systems are just rehashes anyway.

Your under the illusion game companies care about their customers, game companies have already won since most gamers are dumb stupid addicts. MMO's showed game companies just how dumb gamers are. I've never played or paid for an MMO, the only times I've looked at them were when they had free weekends so I could look at how bad and dumbed down they were (which they are). Most MMO's are essentially NON games for the lowest intelligence forms of humanity on the planet.

If we had an intelligent audience we could starve these companies of sales but we don't. I didn't buy Sc2 or diablo 3 and I didn't even play starcraft 2 enough to warrant a purchase provided they had released it legit without any DRM. I have legit copies of both diablo 1+2 and starcraft. I dl'd SC2 to check it out to see if it was same old game, and it was. Nothing special.

Your post is nonsensical, game companies have always wanted to lock down games behind always online they just feared it would effect their sales. Every game company was envious of world of warcraft and how dumb their audience is buying virtual pets and virtual items. It's hilarious! To have an audience so dumb as the gaming audience who are so emotionally addicted to games they spend money on items for a game they pay monthly for... you have to be fucking retarded.

Blizzard trojan horsed online only into a franchise we know most gamers will buy regardless if they were being robbed and beaten since they are so stupid.

It's the same reason STEAM has 40 million mouthbreathers using it. We live in a world of dumb as fuck gamers.

Valve and blizzard trojan horsed online only to a bunch of ignorant kids and retarded adults who are emotionally easy to manipulate. Kids ignorant of how tech works grow up with internet 'always there' never played doom, quake, warcraft 1, etc. You see it especially with kids and retards at Reddit, it is just awful with all the valve dick-sucking going on their. I mean that is some propaganda to worship a game company whose sole goal is profits as if they were your friend WHILE being treated like shit as a customer, that's some dumb shit man. I wonder sometimes if gamers are even aware of how dumb they look to anyone looking in from the outside on their behavior.

You can't stop that kind of dumbness. The free market for games has never worked as ideologues say it does, most people are too stupid and to emotionally easy to manipulate to defend their rights.

You're also proof their propaganda works, game companies don't deserve to be defended or even respected given their criminal behavior. The fact that you want to protect them AND suck their balls means you're part of the stupid crowd.

What you said **sounded** reasonable to someone less intelligent but then you had Guild wars 2 in your tag showing that you were in fact a hypocrite... The fact that you bought and played Guild wars 2 (another DRM'd game) is proof enough.

Anyone who plays MMO's (code for DRM) is part of the very problem they rail against.

It is selling for $40 ala carte. The $60 version is a lumped in with Wings of Liberty.

I don't think Blizzard has "learned" anything. Take Diablo 3. Despite having Ubisoft levels of atrocious DRM and STILL not being completed (PvP) it has sold in excess of 10 million copies. It sold better than Goldeneye, it sold better than Final Fantasy 7, it sold better than Halo 3. I didn't buy it by the way.

WOW is coming on 8 years now and its equilibrium is like 8 million subscribers.

Blizzard hasn't learned anything and we're not part of the conversation.

Personally, when HotS comes out I will do what I do with any game, read the reviews and see if its worth it.

Optional nickname wrote on Nov 13, 2012, 15:06:What happened to the installments of this SC2 game that were supposed to come out yearly, as opposed to triyea-rly? I mean rly? don't matter, Diablo 3 welded shut the coffin on Blizzard, rip, thanks for the gaming memories, no re.

Blizzard has so much operating capital that they just say "whenever the f*ck it's done it's done". Which sounds awesome, but without any kind of enforced discipline, projects that should have a yearly turnover take 3 years. The only thing I can surmise is that the project leads have absolutely no sense of discipline.

Unless they have a totally freeform work environment like Valve, I would have to agree. Also, I would have expected the expansion to sell for $40 like Brood War did after Starcraft (which sold for $60 for a while in the beginning iirc).

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” - Mahatma Gandhi

Do you or have you had an extended wow subscription? I wonder if they're giving it away like they did with D3?

Absolutely not lol. I've never paid for WoW. I was in the closed beta for a brief period but thats it.

I imagine its a bug and blizz will admit it and fix it, then people will argue with them over the screen shots and they will deny giving the game, and then there will be an attempted class action lawsuit, which will fail because I'm sure blizz forbids it.Or not.

InBlack wrote on Nov 13, 2012, 10:54:Im probably going to skip this. Just for spite. I might even pirate it, depending on whether I want to check the story out or not at the time. Fuck Blizzard.

Err ok, piracy out of spite is really silly but whatever. Personally I'm going to skip it simply because I didn't really enjoy SC2 that much. Even the SP stuff felt really weird because half of the game was essentially tutorials and I rarely felt like I got to bring everything to bear until the very end.

The custom mapping community just doesn't seem there compared to War3, not sure why. The vanilla MP takes too much time/commitment to get good at unfortunately as well so I'm left with few reasons to purchase it.

The mod scene isn't going aswell because of the system Blizzard has in place, the new more awful battle.net. It's been quite a wash considering they call it 2.0 and it was missing basic features and it's taking an exp to add them.

Impossible to find the custom game you're after, and even then you get the wrong version, or it's hosted on another region (players can only upload to their region). It's all been a joke in my opinion.

I can't see myself bothering, I was watching some of the major tours but now I have been watching fighting games instead. At least those guys don't have to worry about a match going to hell because of the online DRM.

It says I have heart of the swarm as well and I do not own WoW. Well that may not be exactly true, I think I got an email awhile back saying they were giving me a free digital copy of vanilla WoW but I never used it. I would assume they'd have a check to stop a free customer from getting another freebie, but stranger things have happened (like getting ME2 when you buy CODBLOPS2).